


Threads Of Measure

by andyouknowitis



Series: Certain Calculations [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:58:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3162113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a comic book/superhero lover and lifelong fan of all things Marvel to boot I was never not gonna love this show. I fell in love with these two within about 0.7 seconds of them appearing onscreen. They are utterly adorable and fairly make my heart sing, even when they’re breaking it. This is a Jemma POV response fic to the 'Making Friends and Influencing People' episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads Of Measure

_What's the length of anything?_

The scientist within her is not the one who asks the question. If one could call it that. It's something that might have amused her as a child. A puzzle to be worked out. An exploration that opens up the mind to other, decidedly more complex, questions. Questions which lead to theoretical thinking, and practical analysis, which lead to a world where you're taught to question everything, and be prepared for, indeed, anything.

But she could never have prepared herself for this. 

All her classes, every single bit of training, any experience she's gained in the field; they were all nothing in the face of everything she was trying not to feel.

Her mind feels different now. Quieter. Not calm. She's never been someone who can ever completely switch off. Mind always turning on something. Everything. Thoughts caught on ideas and hopes and possibilities. On things she loved. So, it's not calm. But now it's quiet. It's things she's lost.

_Mind the gap._

She's reminded of London. There's a memory of scanning for trace at the Tube station. He's there and she's laughing at his imitation of the tinny voice. All echoes on an empty platform. Greenwich seems so far away now. She thinks about time. So much lost time. There'd not been enough of it to visit the observatory again, but they'd talked about coming back when things were less busy, if they were ever less busy. They traded possible dates of when they next might be free.  _Twelfth of never then, Simmons. On February twenty-ninth_ _surely, Fitz._ Now it feels like they're standing on either side of the Meridian line. He left trapped in the past, her crossed over into an unknown future.

Yes, she'd wanted excitement and change and just...something. Part of her still did. Maybe always would. Thriving on the thrill of theory made flight. But this was not the change she'd wanted. She'd never wanted them to change. They would have, of course. In some ways. You must adapt. People react. All the variations. Everything changed. But some things were constant. The one certainty in this uneven life they'd been living was that he'd been by her side. That they were in it together. _FitzSimmons_. So familiar, that there were times she'd actually forgotten that it wasn't, in fact, her last name. Their name. It had never felt like they were less for being seen as a unit. She'd never felt like they weren't worth enough as themselves. It wasn't even that it was more, it was just that it was them.

She couldn't even think about Ward. What he'd done. What he'd taken. Not just from Fitz; his voice stolen. Or from her; every other heartbeat. Nor from the team: the answers, and the art of their work. The _Science_. It's what he took from both of them. She's aware of the irony, of course she is. Perhaps Fitz would never have said those words if Ward hadn't put them in that stupid box. But he had. And so he did. He'd said all those words and she'd never had the chance to think; to say what she might have said if she'd just had more time. Bloody time. If this had happened in it's natural order, or in another way, another place, another time, then perhaps their threads would have meshed together.

Her whole world had been altered, and all she'd needed was a moment. She needed to think to help her to feel. Of course she felt. But it was too important, _he_ was too important, to just take a perilous leap like she sometimes did with other things. Having a gift for Science didn't mean she was a genius at being a grown-up and all the things that came with it. Mostly she plans and then, well, if not quite executes, at least attempts a stern face at these kind of things in life. Life as other people know it. Absolutely being a grown-up doing grown-up things. Not Science things. This tends to translate into dodging calls from her parents because she finds it hard to lie to them, or in fact anyone really, which does makes it quite hard to talk to, well anyone, basically, because they're not on the inside. They're on the outside. Or maybe she's on the inside. Its hard to know anymore. She hates not knowing. So now, days end in the loss of her lonely hours, over-analysing lives that aren't her own, and well, clearly she'd be a much better consulting detective, I mean why would he-, oh, _not the point,_ Jemma. But that's how it goes. All scatter in the routine.

So yes, she works better with an order to follow. At least a path to speculate on. For all her passion for the unknown, all the unanswered questions; she needs knowledge to move forward. She needs to know. So now she doesn't know what she might have said, or what might have happened. She doesn't know what it could mean, but she'd have asked the questions. She'd have found out. She'd likely have thought of it as survival analysis, and oh he'd probably tell her it was reliability theory, and they'd fight over it because they fought over everything. But they'd know. They'd know because they'd figure it out together. She can't test the hypothesis of them alone. She can't do it alone because she doesn't know how. She doesn't know anything because she can't talk to him anymore. Because he can't hear her. The thread has pulled, like a run on a sweater. She doesn't want to snap it off. She wants a stitch in the fabric of time.

She wants to reach back into it and pull him across that line. She wants to meet him on the twelfth and find him in a leap year. She wants things that the work she's lived and breathed will try to tell her is impossible. But she wants. She doesn't want him back. She wants where they would have gone next. She wants _Fitz_. She just wants to talk to Fitz.

_What's the length of anything?_

She tries to reason with herself. To be sensible. To be prepared. To do what's been asked of her. Maybe he'll never find a way back. A way forward. Maybe neither of them will. Her throat feels tight to even think it. She aches for all the conversations they've never had. She misses the way he eats her sandwiches. She misses all the measures from her mind to his. All the conversions made into other parts of them, just as easily as breathing. When they took his breath they took hers too. And now the only way to survive is to strap on another tank of air. To get through the next measure of time. And the next. And the next. And the next. To try and be useful. To not make it harder for him to breathe.

She minds the gap. She minds it very much.

 

 

 


End file.
